Australian Government to fund Melbourne startup working on battery energy storage

The Australian Government through its Clean Energy Innovation Fund will support a Melbourne-based startup Relectrify with A$750,000 ($590,000) early stage equity investment.

Relectrify was co-founded by Daniel Crowley and Valentin Muenzel in 2015 and it plans to launch its products by repurposing used batteries in electric vehicles to be used again as energy storage devices at homes.

The company claims to have developed a new battery control technology, which can reduce the cost of repurpose batteries from electric vehicles (EVs), while boosting their performance.

There is a certain time limit or usage limit for batteries in an electric vehicle, after which they can lose their driving range. On the other hand, most batteries still retain about 80% of the storage capacity. This makes them a viable source for electricity storage.

Relectrify CEO and co-founder Valentin Muenzel stated that a wide range of batteries can be recycled and could be repurposed including 12V batteries, household solar battery systems and grid-scale storage.

“Batteries are becoming a fundamental building block of the new energy industry and seeing significant uptake across households, businesses and the power grid. And this is just the beginning. There is an immense need for affordable and capable storage across almost all parts of our lives now and in the future.

“When electric vehicles can no longer provide the driving range and acceleration required, most batteries can still be charged and discharged a further 2000 times. The trouble was large battery packs contain hundreds of individual cells, and if one isn’t working, the whole system stops functioning.

“To fix this problem, Relectrify assembled a world-class team of engineers to develop our own technology that would reduce the cost of repurposing the batteries, boost their performance and increase their longevity.”